The researches covered on the NRESi colloquium were concise on their purpose: applying science over resource management and demographic/social geography. On their work the Dr. Ivar Holand and the Dr. Olof Stjernström chose an uncertainty, hypothesized, followed a methodology and retrieved results. Pretty straightforward.

However, and between the outlined content, the Dr. Stjernström brought up some topics that were worth reflecting on.

Using a playful tone of voice, he denoted how social science tends to focus on the negatives: A case like ‘n population suffering from chronic depression’ might catch out the attention of social science better than a ‘healthy happy population’. Now I exhort you to prove me wrong but I honestly can’t recall reading as many paper over “laugh rate” than those about “anxiety rate”, to name an example. If this pessimistic bias is true I kept thinking on its implications:

a) If a given individual that takes part on the ‘happy healthy population‘ all of a sudden feels depressed, anxious or any other ‘unpleasant‘(1) emotion, he is likely to feel that -by declaring his relatively anomalous condition- he will be object of study, which ultimately can lead him/her to feel out of place, increasing the isolation of the individual. Is all contained within the emotional intelligence and the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: us, individuals, need to feel emotional belongingness to ultimately achieve the self fulfillment Felling emotionally out of place can be a barrier, specially when the population you take part of is “ideally happy”.

Please note that I intentionally pointed out the term ‘unpleasant‘ since I am strong believer, and again I invite you to discussion, that it might not be really that healthy to be happy all the time: the mind has a wide spectrum of emotions; forcing ourselves into a perpetual happiness can be as harmful as extreme depression. Let’s just say that as much as I love fairy tales I don’t aspire to live happily ever after, instead, I wish to have a emotionally-full ever after (to call it somehow). For me is healthy to feel sad, angry, and moreover alone. I’ve seen our generation repudiating the loneliness, for example, and a great evidence of this lies on the vast popularity of dating apps or social media. All of this ‘unpleasant’ emotions are as good as the pleasant ones, my best advice is not to let any emotion overcome yourself.

b) As an environmentalist I will not try to block the sun with one finger,  climate change is real and its consequences can be severe and irreparable. You see? Over there I made a strong, pessimist statement that is ultimately useless for any other purpose than scaring the reader (or make him sad/anxious).  As social sciences are a reflect of how we communicate, a pessimistic bias on social sciences might explain the trend on pessimistic non-social research. Even more, the immense amount of pessimistic information have created a society overwhelmed, where in true, severe statements (such as the initial on this paragraph) can easily become meaningless. For this, I also declare myself a believer of the power of change, and what I want to do onward is to provide and help towards a a solution.

For as catastrophic as the scenario might appear, we are still here: we breath, we have water, glaciers, forests, we are surrounded by pure, precious life. This is the moment, not how bad decisions were taken on the past nor how apocalyptic the future might look like. None of them exists, what ‘might have been’ in the past and our perception of the future are both just a possibility that only exists in a world of speculation. Perhaps there might be tons of reasons to feel overwhelmed or incapable of fixing up this world but we are the masters of our own faith, we have the power to change.

This actually was brought up by Dr. Stjernström at a certain point: he brought up the importance of involvement and working together; regardless of the language we speak or any other categorization of population, since categorizing, and I quote, “increase the risk of stigmatization of x and y”.

I wouldn’t ask them anything regarding the exposed research, as I said I found it accurate and methodical. I would like to ask, on the other hand, how can you ‘lure’ more people for the change? So that we can join our efforts together.

Anyway, I’m enormously glad because, even though the power of change is breaking news for me, in here I’ve found a couple of people that are actually doing it. Maybe the comments provided by Dr. Stjernström were off-topic but they definitely increased my motivation.

Thanks for reading,

Sergio.